Should we hire a lawyer?
Hi, I’m a female but this feels like more of the subreddit I need. This is a vent/asking for help. My fiancé’s ex girlfriend recently took my partner into court for child support (conveniently around the time we got engaged 🙄) prior we had no issues. Provided money whenever asked and spent weekends with the child when asked (for reasons, I’ll get into later in this post.) we decided to take the high road, provided paystubs and expense reports and everything. She got in front of the judge and said she does not work, has not worked in over a year and has no intentions to start working and the judge ordered us to pay the maximum in our state, back pay from when she filed, as well as pay for private health insurance for her. This feels extremely excessive and vindictive especially when she makes more money than us. My partners ex is a very popular OnlyFans model and full out porn star. Her income is hard to prove as she only does “contract” work and when we asked the judge if her income could “actually” be looked into the judge just said “well, she said she was unemployed” but she’s REALLY NOT!! I truly feel like this is a petty way to dip into our wedding fund which is extremely annoying because anytime she wants to go “collab” with someone or work in a brothel for months on end she would drop A off with us and suddenly, she’s asked for a police escort to her car because she’s “scared of us”. My question is what should we do? We kinda are debating split custody however, I think she’s creating a narrative that he’s violent now (which could not be further from the truth) so it’ll be harder to get split custody and I’m unsure if I even want to do that if her mother is poisoning A’s thoughts on me and her father. I’m thinking we should get a lawyer about possibly getting it reduced but would that even be worth it if she won’t ever prove her income?